For all those who believe in Christianity or Some form of it...
POSTED BY: RiveR6213
UPDATED: Wednesday, May 23, 2007 10:10
VIEWED: 25834
PAGE 3 of 16
Quote:You don't KNOW that, you only know your time HERE is limited. You will leave, that is all we know for sure.
Originally posted by Causal:
But I do know this: I will die.
Technical Chrisisall
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Quote:
Originally posted by Causal:
Reality will be what happens, regardless of what we believe about it. For instance, suppose that we aren't meat (just for the sake of argument), that instead we reincarnate. When you die, you're not just going to cease to exist, you're going to reincarnate, whether you believe in that or not. Now I don't know for certain what happens (that is, I don't know with absolute certainty). But I do know this: I will die. And whatever the reality of death is, it will happen to me, regardless of what I believe about it now.
And that is scary too... extremely so. But it does makes sense. It would be nice if everybody got to go to wherever they wanted, and everybody was right. But then I would have made a really really bad choice.
Constance
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I live in a world that canceled Firefly during the first season... I think I'm ALREADY living in hell!
- Houdini
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Quote:
Originally posted by DonCoat:Quote:You misunderstood me, Causal. I am a total realist and do not dispute my mortality.
Originally posted by Causal:Quote:
Originally posted by DonCoat:Quote:Or not.
Originally posted by Causal:
The best we can hope for is that our beliefs accurately map onto reality, because eventually we will all be confronted with the reality of what happens after we die.
Planning to live forever, are we?
Death and taxes, my friend--we're all going to die. Ergo, we'll all be confronted with whatever reality brings at the time of death. Even if that's annihilation, and we aren't conscious of the reality of it, we'll still all get confronted with it. You might say that in some sense, death is one of the only reality that we'll encounter in its unvarnished state.
What I dispute is the notion that "we will be confronted by the reality of what happens after we die", necessarily. If, as I suspect, man is meat (to quote Joseph Heller), nothing happens after we die... so there will be neither need nor opportunity to confront anything.
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I'm pointin' right at it!
...if you truly believe what you've expounded, DonCoat, then you should be in complete agreement with River6213. If Man is only meat, then 'consciousness' is only a mutation that separates us from the balance of the natural kingdom, an aberration that destroys its own environment, a cancer. We should all be exorcised from this precious bed of Life.
To the extent that you may feel that Intelligence, that Humanity itself is not a cancer, then you also feel that Humanity has worth. That's Faith. You believe in something that stark scientific evidence disproves.
I am a Christian. But I don't hold to any established Man-made dogma. I believe that Jesus was God's gift to us. I believe that Jesus changed the way we viewed the world, our place in it, and the way we think of ourselves. This was a fundamental change, a starting over. Even if River6213 'sins' against that change of Human nature wrought by Jesus Christ and says she doesn't care, she still is able to perceive that she has sinned. Before Christ, Humanity could live in sin and be unaware of it. Even through the twisted vision of some modern-day 'religions' based on the Christ, enough of the Truth gets through and sears the soul; the eyes are opened.
So, I am going to be with the Creator when I leave this earthly body in the dust. And my entire essential being (my soul freed of the 'evil' constraints of physiology) will be in its transcendental state, in the natural home of the soul/spirit. You can call that Heaven, if you'd like; but I think it transcends words and names.
I also don't expect to see only Christians there. That makes me a heretic. So be it. I follow in the footsteps of the greatest heretic Judaism has ever known. I believe that God provides a way for everyone who seeks Him, so that they may be reunited with Him once they've discarded these crude bodies in which we have been confined.
My Christian tao:
Get an old King James version Bible, in which the words of Jesus are printed in red ink. Read those words and ignore the Disciples, for the most part, as the Bible equivalent of the Keystone Kops. To the observant reader, Jesus' disciples are always getting His message wrong; they are always the example of how not to behave, how not to think. In short, they are just like us. If they'd just stop worrying about their bodily wants and desires, and pay attention to what the Lord is saying instead of filtering it through their own faulty prejudices and essentially sinful nature, they'd be able to understand what Jesus is really saying.
So, just read the Lord's words, without the distraction of all the disciples' misconceptions and misunderstandings, without their fumblings and tragicomic errors. There is a simple beauty that strikes straight to the heart. It
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Beautifully written Zoid.
remember that a kick in the ass is a step forward
Shamrock
www.myspace.com/clover718
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Quote:
Originally posted by Causal:
The interesting thing about this is that we can't all be right. Leaving aside the postmodern disdain for truth, let's go with correspondence theory ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correspondence_theory_of_truth): truth is that which corresponds with the way things actually are. So two contradictory propositions can't be both be true in virtue of the law of non-contradiction ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_noncontradiction). Sor for instance, the propositions "There is a hell," and, "There is not a hell" cannot both be true. One must be false. And by the Law of Excluded Middle ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_excluded_middle) given any proposition (e.g. "There is a hell") then the further proposition "Either there is a hell or there is not a hell" is true (even if the truth value of the original proposition is unknown). So the thing that fascinates me about this is not that people disagree; that's bound to happen. The thing that fascinates me is that sometimes people behave as if their belief alone is sufficient for something's being true. But that's not the case. Suppose that it turns out that there really is no heaven at all. If that's the case, the belief that there is one is false, no matter how hard anyone believes it. And, if it turns out that there is no heaven at all, no one will go there, no matter how hard they believe it. Reality doesn't map onto our beliefs about it. It just is. The best we can hope for is that our beliefs accurately map onto reality, because eventually we will all be confronted with the reality of what happens after we die.
And, since we're being asked: heaven. But even though I'm a Christian-type person, I don't have a traditionally Augustinian vision of heaven. My view is closer to that of the Patristics.
I fear I must disagree with you. You see, in god's infinite wisdom, he makes us all right.
If you believe in heaven, and think you belong there; that's where you end up. Likewise hell. If you believe in re-incarnation, god is wonderously obliging, and sends you back as a grasshopper (or whatever). Believe there is no life after death; that's ok by the big-guy, he's happy to oblige -- poof gone!
Let's remember the omni in omniscient and omnipotent. And if he doesn't have a sense of humor... we're screwed anyway (note: 'he' is the indefinite pronoun of the english language, please fill in he/she if you find that "helpful")
Frankly, I've decided to go to heaven. I figure its got a good view of things, and that ought to keep me a amused for a while. Get tired of that, I'll try that re-incarnation thing.
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I am a youth minister in Minnesota. I went to a bible college. By most I am considered a conservative Christian and yes I do believe in a heaven and hell. I do respect others opinions that do differ from mine, but I don't agree. There is a big difference however, many people do treat those as the same. I do have to say this is the first conversation I have read about Christianity/Religion without really aggressive and hate filled posts. Thank you all for this topic it is really good to discuss such matters.
I do understand that nobody knows me here since I believe this is my thrid post, but I just want to through this out there. If anyone has a prayer request I'm all ears and would love to pray for you.
Take Care
Clearstatic
P.S. Most translations of the Bible have Jesus' words in red ink not just the King James Version in case anyone was looking for another translation.
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Quote:
Originally posted by zoid:
I also don't expect to see only Christians there. That makes me a heretic. So be it. I follow in the footsteps of the greatest heretic Judaism has ever known. I believe that God provides a way for everyone who seeks him, so that they may be reunited with Him once they've discarded these crude bodies in which we have been confined.
God Loves You All (whether you believe in Him or not),
zoid
P.S.
I expect to 'see' Ghandi in 'Heaven'...and Einstein, too.
_________________________________________________
"I aim to misbehave." -Capt. Mal Reynolds, Serenity, a.k.a. 'the BDBOF'
(Zoid's post edited by me)
Matthew 3:9, the words of John the Baptist (New American Standard Version) - and do not suppose that you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father’; for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham.
My father (ordained in 1960) once told me he expects to see lots of "stones" in Heaven, and I absolutely agree.
Beautiful post, Zoid. This was all I could think to add.
MAL "You only gotta scare him."
JAYNE "Pain is scary..."
http://www.fireflytalk.com - Big Damn Podcast
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Quote:
Originally posted by leadb:
I fear I must disagree with you. You see, in god's infinite wisdom, he makes us all right.
If you believe in heaven, and think you belong there; that's where you end up. Likewise hell. If you believe in re-incarnation, god is wonderously obliging, and sends you back as a grasshopper (or whatever). Believe there is no life after death; that's ok by the big-guy, he's happy to oblige -- poof gone!
Let's remember the omni in omniscient and omnipotent. And if he doesn't have a sense of humor... we're screwed anyway (note: 'he' is the indefinite pronoun of the english language, please fill in he/she if you find that "helpful")
Frankly, I've decided to go to heaven. I figure its got a good view of things, and that ought to keep me a amused for a while. Get tired of that, I'll try that re-incarnation thing.
Is it just in eternal matters that God has to obey you? Or in other areas too?
Plus, the "omni" in omnipotent might not mean what you think. You'll be bucking the majority of thinkers going back well over a thousand years if you think that God can do the logically impossible (like make a round square or make it such that one and one make three). God's omnipotence is limited to the logically possible. It doesn't limit God to say that he can't do the logically impossible, because when you say, "God can make a round square" you're not really saying anything coherent at all, because what you're saying is, "God can make something both be and not be at one and the same time and in one and the same way" and that's logically impossible. Why? Because the laws of logic are what they are in virtue of who God is. Violating the laws of logic would constitute a violation of his own nature, and that's something that God cannot do. It's like the old question, "Can God make a rock so big he can't lift it?" That's just nonsense, and nonsense is still nonsense, whether you're talking it about God or not.
In the second place, I'm not saying that God can't dispose of his creatures however he sees fit, but I just can't see him doing to them whatever the creature would have him do. I'm sure that Hitler wouldn't choose to go to hell, if given the choice. I'm pretty sure that he'd choose heaven. But there's something repugnant about the idea of a "God" who would give Hitler an in on heaven just because that's what Hitler wanted. If this is the case, then God isn't really God at all. He makes no demands on us, has no expectations, any and all behavior is permissible with no eternal repercussions. He exists (on your view) solely to shunt us all into our self-selected eternal destiny: God the celestial switch-tracks. What I want to know is, if God is as wondrously obliging, why doesn't he fix things in the here and now? If God is so concerned with our needs and desires, why is there evil in the world? Your God seems pretty heartless: more or less willing to allow us to visit any and all sorts of evil on each other lift a finger to stop them and he'll levy no consequences either here or in the hereafter.
My point is that there is some reality about all the things that we've been talking about. Some of us (or maybe none of us) are right, some of us (maybe all of us) are wrong. But there is some proposition that can be advanced concerning what happens at death that will accurately map onto reality. And you could be right: it could be that God is just a kindly old gentleman who wants his creatures to have the best after they're dead. Suppose that God is that kindly old gentleman. When you die, God will obligingly send you wherever your heart desires, and you may spend eternity in heaven. But suppose you're wrong. Suppose that it's not the case that God will oblige you. If that turns out to be the case, no amount of your believing will change the matter. Because a thing is true in virtue of whether it is, in fact, the way reality really is. And if there really is no God, you're going to pop out of existence with the rest of
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Im coming out of the woodwork after a long hiatus on these boards for this question.
River6213, your initial comment said you believe you would go to hell. Why do you think that? Where are you getting the idea that lust and greed are bad? You must believe they are bad and yet you still do them. Seems that something outside of yourself must be saying they are bad, and Im guessing "society" isnt enough, for we all buck what society says often enough. For me, that thing by which I get my ideas of evil and good from is God. Where do you get yours?
Just a thought.
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